Calcium is the number one supporting element of teeth and bones. Salts found in calcium total 70% of the bone’s composition, giving it rigidity and strength. Despite its importance, calcium is the one mineral an average diet is going go lack. The deficiency of calcium means we’re in a condition in which an optimum supply of calcium fails to be metabolized or even received to begin with.

Teeth and bones hold about 97-98% of the total calcium deposits inside the human body. The rest can be found circulating in the bloodstream, performing a large variety of functions, each more important than the other for our body. It helps with contracting muscles and regulating the heart’s contractions. It also plays a lead role in transmitting impulses from nerve to nerve and in blood clotting. Calcium is also, most importantly perhaps, involved when stimulating the uterus’ contractions in the process of giving birth and afterwards the mother’s milk production. It can help regulate the various hormones’ secretion and will aid in the various enzymes’ functioning throughout the human body.

When we ingest Calcium, we absorb it through the small intestine, after which it goes into the bloodstream and later on into bones. Calcium absorbing percentage highly depends on vitamin D being present inside the body, being a main ingredient that makes up hormones enabling calcium to be able to pass from the digestive system’s level into blood and bones. Also, the calcium absorption can also be boosted by phosphorus. Optimum calcium levels in the blood can also be maintained by the thyroid and parathyroid glands (which secrete calcitonin and parathyroid hormone).

These mechanisms’ presence is meant to regulate calcium levels in order to prevent any deficiencies in calcium from happening in the bloodstream. But a deficiency such as this does develop, what parathyroid hormone does is to start transferring calcium from bones to maintain the needed levels of it in the bloodstream. This will ultimately strip your bones of calcium, rendering them weaker, brittle and subjected to fractures.

Results of even a mild calcium insufficiency, but over long periods of time, can be dramatic: thinning of the bones, softening of bony tissue: osteomalacia, or even termed osteoporosis.

Some recent studies have linked the deficiency of calcium with high blood pressure levels (hypertension) and even colon cancer.
What’s even worse is suffering from a severe deficiency in calcium. A typical syndrome in this case is tetany. This involves experiencing sensations of numbness, and/or tingling in the mouth along with painful spasms and aches of the muscles.

It has been said times and times before: calcium is highly needed for preventing osteoporosis. But actually lacking this precious mineral is not limited to just weak bones. Your heart, along with other vital organs and body functions, desperately need calcium so they can operate at top levels. Alarmingly, according to highly credited statistics, only about 21% of people get the minimum recommended intake of calcium, not to mention the needed levels.

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